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Has Israel committed genocide in Gaza?
That question became one of the most contentious moments in debate hosted by The Sacramento Bee between congressional candidates Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Rocklin, and former state Sen. Richard Pan.
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Kiley said no. When he repeatedly pressed Pan to answer, Pan declined to give him the yes-or-no response he wanted.
My answer is no.
That does not mean I am indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. I am not. The death of any innocent civilian is tragic. The suffering of Palestinian children is heartbreaking.
But genocide is something else.
It is one of the gravest accusations people can make. And I believe the word has increasingly been stretched beyond its meaning and used not simply to criticize Israel, but to condemn it.
That troubles me as a Jew. It also troubles me as someone who was taught by my late mother, a high school English teacher who believed in the precision of language.
Yes, words matter.
Genocide is not another word for a terrible war. It does not simply mean that many civilians have died, or that terrible suffering has occurred.
Intent matters.
Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” during World War II, understood that. No existing word adequately described the intentional destruction of a people. The Genocide Convention that followed the war determined that genocide requires the intent to destroy —in whole or in part — a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
There are scholars and human rights organizations that believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. There are also respected scholars and legal experts who disagree. Surely that disagreement should make us cautious about speaking as though the matter has already been settled.
The International Court of Justice has not yet decided that question. In its January 2024 ruling, the court allowed the case against Israel to proceed and ordered Israel to comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention. It did not rule that Israel was committing genocide.
Yet, listening to our political debate today, one might think the verdict had already been rendered.
The word is everywhere: it appears on protest signs, on college campuses, in political speeches and throughout social media. In Michigan, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has repeatedly used it to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani continues to invoke the word in his public statements.
Now, we have seen it become part of our own political debate here in Sacramento.
Say the word — or explain why you won’t. That troubles me.
Somewhere along the way, genocide has become more than an accusation. It has become a political litmus test.
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There is also an irony that is difficult for me to ignore.
The war in Gaza followed the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, when approximately 1,200 people in Israel were killed and about 250 were taken hostage. Hamas has a long history of rejecting Israel’s right to exist, and its founding charter contains explicitly antisemitic and genocidal language, calling for Israel’s destruction and invoking the murder of Jews.
The horrors of Oct. 7 do not make every subsequent Israeli military action right. Palestinian civilians are not Hamas. Their lives are no less precious than Israeli lives. Supporting Israel does not mean defending every decision made by its government.
But acknowledging the suffering of Palestinians does not, by itself, establish that Israel intends to destroy the Palestinian people.
We ought to be able to hold multiple thoughts at the same time.
Amid so much death and suffering, some will ask if I am parsing the meaning of a word.
It is a fair question.
The suffering and death of innocent people should never be reduced to a debate over terminology. A Palestinian child does not suffer less because a court calls the circumstances a war crime rather than genocide. An Israeli family does not grieve less because the murder of a loved one carries one legal name rather than another.
Human suffering does not require the word “genocide” to make it real.
We can mourn innocent Palestinians. We can mourn innocent Israelis. We can condemn Hamas. We can criticize Israel’s government. We can demand accountability when wrongdoing occurs.
And we can still insist that words mean something.
For Jews, there is an additional and painful irony.
A word created by a Polish Jewish lawyer in the shadow of the destruction of European Jewry is now routinely attached to the Jewish state, including by some who question whether that Jewish state should exist at all.
That history does not place Israel beyond judgment.
But surely that history should give us pause.
That is why I understood Pan’s reluctance to give Kiley the answer he demanded.
Pan should tell voters what he believes. Candidates for Congress should expect difficult questions.
But our compassion for Palestinians and Israelis should not be measured by whether we use — or refuse to use — the word genocide
Words matter. And when we use a word as highly charged as “genocide,” we have an obligation to use it wisely and with precision.
Reuven H. Taff is rabbi emeritus of Mosaic Law Congregation in Sacramento and a past president of the Sacramento Board of Rabbis. His commentaries have appeared in The Sacramento Bee, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
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